The following is an example of my daughter’s dialogue, spoken over the first ten minutes of pretty much any film that you could think of, that is suitable for children aged four. It doesn’t matter what genre it is, it will always follow the same pattern…

Which basically means things will possibly go wrong. I mean, why else would I put the word trusty in inverted commas?

Anyway the reason for this trip is the procurement of a Nintendo Mini SNES Classic, a sold-out item that I have managed to reserve at Micromania, in the Carrefour shopping centre in Bourges. It’s an in and out job, I just want my piece of retro-gaming nostalgia and then I’m out of there and back home, so I can get stuck into said bit of retro-gaming nostalgia. The journey there is trouble-free, it’s effectively a straight line, with the odd slight curve, and then a left turn at the end. Easy-peasy.

I’m out of the car, in the shopping centre and heading happily back to the car, hard-to-find gaming-system in hand before you can say ‘Well that was unexpectedly easy’. Then it all goes wrong.

I boot up the satnav, head out of the car-park and confidently press the ‘Go Home’ button. It’s not till I’m sat at the traffic lights that it dawns on me that something is wrong. It’s 10.30 a.m, it took me an hour to get here, so why is it now saying I won’t be home till 7.30 p.m? It’s saying that because I haven’t updated it since we moved to France, so it thinks ‘Go Home’ means home to West Yorkshire.

In England.

Doh!

So I frantically choose ‘recently found’ as I watch the traffic lights change, keeping one eye on the car behind me, which has taken up the standard French position of being just one inch from my rear bumper. He seems to be aware that there’s an Englishman in distress in this car. At least that’s what his eyes tell me. I can see all these nuances because he is parked an inch from my rear bumper. It’s standard practice in France you see.

New info input the satnav seems to take an age to ‘recalculate’. I love the way my satnav says this. It sounds like someone underwater. A lady underwater, maybe Aqua Marina from Stingray, a TV series with marionettes that I used to watch when I was young and we didn’t have Youtube. She was a mermaid who helped the main character defeat his nemesis. She must have made an impression because I can’t remember his name, or the main bad guy’s name. Although now I think about it I don’t think she could talk. So maybe not her.

As the lights change – giving me just enough time to receive updated information without causing my bumper-hugging friend behind me to actually attempt to mount my car – I follow the new route and pull a hasty right turn. Hasty, but not illegal. I’ve driven about 5 yards when the drowning-female-tones inform me that the route is once again being ‘recalculated’. I recognise this area though, I think to myself. I’ve had a bad Chinese buffet here*.

Then lady satnav makes me take a right turn and I’m in completely uncharted territory. I know now that I have to listen to her every command, because I’ve just remembered I forgot to bring my phone, and the scenery is starting to look a bit creepy.

Picture in your mind the locales used in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and, particularly, Deliverance. Transpose those locales to France – so basically take the yellow filter off the lens – and you can see why I’m getting worried. So many abandoned buildings. So many abandoned rusting cars. Who did they use to belong to? Did I see a curtain twitch in that window just then? Was that sunlight glinting off a shotgun’s barrel?

I once saw a film called Calvaire, set in rural France, about a traveller who breaks down and gets taken in by a local farmer. The local farmer gets confused, and thinks the traveller is his dead wife. Did I mention the traveller is actually a man? Hilarious scenes follow where the traveller is forced to dress like a woman, and a pig is raped. The theme seems to be that there’s nothing much to do in rural France, except rape pigs and then dress up stranded men like women. Oh and the traveller gets raped too.

I only watched it once.

So films like this plus my overactive imagination, as well as my complete lack of any means of communication – bar screaming – make me feel all kinds of worried. The roads get narrower and narrower, and the buildings look ever more sinister.

Satnavs always do this to me. A straightforward route to wherever I’m going is followed with a ‘scenic route’ on the way back. The worst one was one in the UK, when I was driving to Wales. That journey involved lots of animal skulls, men with few teeth, and a road that would have been better suited to rally-driving. I think satnav manufacturers are actually angry farmers, who try to make people drive down their windy roads, so that they can accidentally run them over in their cars with their tractors.

Like I said, I’ve got an overactive imagination.

Just as I’m despairing of ever getting out of this rural hell, and begin thinking that I actually died back at the traffic lights, and am in a hell of rusting tractors and scared-looking farm animals, the satnav tells me to turn right and I see a vision: the main road home. I breathe a sigh of relief as I head back down this familiar road, winding the window down (something I was loathe to do ten minutes earlier) so that the sweat down my back can dry.

I smile at the driver behind me, as I drive home, imagining him smiling back at me. Actually I don’t have to imagine it, I can see it. He’s a she, and she’s not smiling. I know this because she’s driving an inch from my rear bumper. It’s standard practice in France you see…

*I have yet to have a good Chinese in France. They are edible, and you can’t really complain, but it’s a bit like that scene in The Fly, where he puts a cut of meat in the teleporter, cooks it, and then invites his lady-friend to try it, and compare it with a non-teleported piece of meat. One’s fine the other one tastes synthetic. Well that’s how I always think of Chinese restaurants in France, when comparing them to the UK ones.

It’s Friday afternoon, I’ve just watched the trailer for the new Alien film: Alien Covenant.

It looks like standard Alien-fare, lots of scared people running away from aliens, wishing they had made better career choices. I dismiss it, thinking it will be a decent rental, and get on with my day.

Flash-forward (remember that tv series? dreadful stuff) to 2 a.m and I’m woken by my partner, who has heard a noise and thinks there’s something in the room.

We quickly realise that it’s not inside the room – it’s in the loft above our heads.

It’s clearly an animal, you can hear its little feet scampering to-and-fro.

I say little, but at 2 a.m everything takes on added menace.

I flash-back (maybe that will make a better tv series?) to the trailer for Ridley Scott’s latest, imagining face-huggers, and acid-blooded-beasties up there.

So when my partner offers to go and fetch the ladders, so I can go up there, in the dark, and find out what it is, my response is both immediate and gallant.

I don’t know why I started doing this, but they’re laughing their heads off and it would be a shame to stop now.

We’re at the local park, the one with two swings, a bench and nothing else. This is the lesser of two parks in my village, the other one has climbing frames, slides, carousels…you name it, the other park has it. There’s clearly a disparity in the allocation of fun, maybe there were some midnight-thefts, or maybe someone with an eye on having the best park slept with the right person to ensure their park came out on top. I don’t know, but that’s the way it is.

We don’t mind though. The swings are ideal, one is for bigger kids – my son – and the other is designed for toddlers – my daughter. It’s great as I can push them at the same time, they have fun and I can see how far I can swing them before they start doing that ominous wobbling thing that all swings do, when they are reaching dangerous altitudes.

As I swing them I just happen to say, in a strong Austrian accent ‘I am the Swinginator’.

My lad loves this and immediately starts laughing, as does his sister. ‘Again daddy, again’ He cries. I oblige with ‘My mission is…to swing you’. They laugh and clearly want more, but I really can’t think of any more swing-related phrases and so lapse into actual lines from The Terminator franchise to appease them. This really gets them laughing.

‘Skynet becomes self-aware, and launches nuclear missiles at targets in Russia, knowing that the counter strike will take out its targets here in America’ more laughter follows.

‘The man most directly responsible for Skynet’s creation is Miles Bennet Dyson’ both kids are red in the face with glee.

‘Mimetic Polyalloy, whatever it touches it becomes…it cannot form items that contain complex moving parts,but it can form knives and stabbing weapons’ I start to worry that my son will wet himself, he’s laughing that hard.

As I’m pushing them, trying to think up more Schwarzenegger pearls, I wonder why I started coming out with this robot-themed narration.

I watched Terminator Genisys at the weekend, so that must be it.

I didn’t understand it.

There were robots coming from the future, the past and the possible-future. Arnold was in it, but he was old.

Also someone sent Arnold back to before all the other Terminator films, but nobody explained that part.

And the Golden Gate Bridge had an action scene on it, in what must now be a pre-requisite of action films.

Back to the swings and the kids are still in gales of laughter, but I’m running on empty with Terminator-talk.

I know, let’s switch to that other kiddie-favourite: Darth Vader.

‘You are part of a rebel-alliance, and you will give me the information I need’ I say, channelling James Earl Jones so well it’s scary. The kids crack up.

‘I changed our deal, pray I do not change it further’ and ‘Obi Wan has taught you well’ are both met with similar levels of amusement.

At this point my son decides to lift up his feet and squat on his swing, he looks a bit precarious to me. ‘I’m doing it like Spiderman daddy’ he says ‘Are you safe?’ I ask him. This makes me consider doing a Laurence Olivier ‘Is it safe?’ impersonation from Marathon Man.

I decide against it though, and we leave the park having exhausted our inappropriate banter.